August 20 They Were Below The Mouth
Of Cannon-Ball River, And Were In The Country Occupied
And Claimed By The Sioux.
Here, if anywhere, they must be
prepared for attacks from hostile Indians.
At this point,
the journal sets forth this interesting observation: -
"Since we passed in 1804, a very obvious change has taken place
in the current and appearance of the Missouri. In places where at
that time there were sandbars, the current of the river now passes,
and the former channel of the river is in turn a bank of sand.
Sandbars then naked are now covered with willows several feet high;
the entrance of some of the creeks and rivers has changed in consequence
of the quantity of mud thrown into them; and in some of the bottoms
are layers of mud eight inches in depth."
The streams that flow into the Missouri and Mississippi from the westward
are notoriously fickle and changeable. Within a very few years,
some of them have changed their course so that farms are divided
into two parts, or are nearly wiped out by the wandering streams.
In at least one instance, artful men have tried to steal part of a State
by changing the boundary line along the bed of the river, making the stream
flow many miles across a tract around which it formerly meandered.
On this boundary line between the Sioux and their upper neighbors, the party
met a band of Cheyennes and another of Ricaras, or Arikaras.
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